Mobile Apps: Essential Tools for the Modern Enterprise

Alan Joch has been an independent business and technology writer for more than a decade. His expertise includes server and desktop virtualization, cloud computing, emerging mobile applications, and cybersecurity.

Mobile devices and applications are finding their way into all types of enterprises. The latest statistics show how extensively modern organizations depend on notebook computers, smartphones and tablets, as well as the mobile applications that run on them.

The Mobility At Work Report, a 2013 CDW survey of 2,400 workers and IT professionals across eight industries, found that 54 percent of users who participated in bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs used their mobile devices for business applications beyond phone calls and email. More than half of IT professionals in the same report said their department recommends specific mobile applications or devices for employee use.

What’s behind this mass movement to mobile technology? Enterprise managers and staff across commercial businesses and public-sector organizations see clear and quantifiable benefits to offering users access to information and applications from anywhere, at any time.

Higher Revenue With Better Communication

Mobile technologies improve communication between field and office personnel, as well as with customers. Mobility delivers greater productivity and better customer service. This can potentially translate into significantly higher revenue and profits for mobile-savvy enterprises, compared with their more traditional peers, according to the 2013 State of Mobility Survey from Symantec.

Internal studies by individual organizations bolster these survey findings. Intel found that staff members freed up nearly an hour a day thanks to mobile efficiencies, which if spread throughout the entire enterprise would greatly reduce the cost of doing business.

Significantly, Intel found that mobility gains aren’t only for road warriors and information workers. A study of tablets used in the firm’s manufacturing operations documented increased efficiency, accuracy and savings in time and costs. In fact, technicians increased productivity up to 17 percent and saw a 30 percent time savings in processes using online information.

Other enterprises are also seeing how mobility benefits a wide variety of business operations. For example, Lextech Global Services, a mobile application developer that guarantees a 100 percent “return on app” within 12 months, reports how a mobile app connects the field sales force at a building materials company with more accurate pricing information.

For these sales reps, having updated data while in the field means they can avoid pricing errors that could cost the company nearly $1 million per week. A Lextech customer that provides energy audits for corporate clients uses a mobile app to cut audit time by two-thirds, which enables auditors to generate more revenue for the enterprise.